Portfolio Management Tools

I need to compare Portfolio Management tools. But I don't see how to do this.. the market leaders in this area (IBM - with the RPM, CA - with the Clarity, SAP - with the xRPM, Primavera ...) does not allow the download.

I had seen a lot of studies about the vendors (comparing them), but nothing about the tools. I need download one by one and install, configure, study ... any idea how?

okay. Now I just have to figure out how I to upload the XLS or send you an email through IT Toolbox. Any recommendations?

The XLS lists of elements to compare the products on grouped into categories. A good portion of this is drawn from a Gartner magic quadrant article on portfolio tools. The categories of requirement areas are:
* What we don't need
* Vision
* Ability to Execute
* Service/Support
* Features/Functionality
* Technology/Architecture
* Cost

After my research last week, the best way is to click on my
profile and then send me an invitation to connect. In that
invitation, you can add in your own message --that's where you
can include your personal email. I will send you a note with
the XLS attached.

I exchanged Wiki upgrade entries with Sonja and adding
attachments is on the list of requested enhancements for that
area.

For those I have replied to let me know if you have any
suggestions for improvements.

Deborah, I read you set up a spreadsheet to compare PPM tools and
that the best way for you to share it would be creating a
connection and do it via e-mail. I sent you a ... "blank"
request for connection since this is the very first time I do a
request in ittoolbox and I didn't find the way to enter any
text.
So what I'm asking you is to accept my connection request in
order to share our experience (we are going to evaluate the
Clarity solution from CA) and ... your useful spreadsheet tool
as well.
Thanks a lot in advance!
Andrea

I would also encourage you to throw UMT's products into your
assessment the mix. I've worked with many of the tools you
reference, and UMT's is frankly vastly superior. If you want a
more empirical evaluation, Gartner has published numerous PPM
assessments.

Hi Victor. I suggest you don't need to compare Portfolio
Management tools. You need to solve a business problem. When
you have that business problem defined and documented, you need
to select a shortlist of vendors (good research material exists
from people like Gartner, and Forrester, and specialists like
the Birchman Group) and invite them to show you how they can
solve your problem.

The cost of leading packages like Clarity, HP/Mercury, PlanView
etc can easily run into millions of $. You won't get a free
download of that kind of software.

Equally, if you haven't got a specification of what you need
(functionality), or defined the criteria you'll use to choose
between the systems (cost, time to implementation, ease of
integration with your existing architecture, hosting potential,
etc etc), all that will happen is that you'll be persuaded by
the system you saw last.

Other people's assessment sheets are useful, but only to a point.
Each organisation's requirements are different. Do you want to
deal just with the Development Portfolio? Or the Discovery
Portfolio as well? And how about the Asset Portfolio? Will you
use the tool for resource management? And for financial
control, or will that be done by your core accounting system?

There's no easy answer to what you want to do. I would simply
encourage you to have a clear, documented definition of your
business requirements before going anywhere near a system!

When you say both, do you mean "out of the box" workflow, metrics and
quality gates or the capability to build them? I think all the big
players have the capability but not sure how much
"practice/method/measurement" is available OOTB especially when it comes
to Product.

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When confronted with this situation in selecting any IT tool, product or even service, I make the sales team do their job.
I identify all of the products that I am interested in, contact their sales representatives and schedule them all come in to run me a conference room demo, preferably all on the same day. During the demo's I take notes, ask specific questions about capabilities and compare & contrast the different offerings. I also like to get some other people who maybe using the product involved in the demos as well in order get their opinions & perspectives.
Usually after this process I have a much better idea on each products capabilities or short-comings. I ask for a trial/evaluation version of the product I think is the best of those presented to run in-house for further evaluation (many times I donâ€™t even have to ask as theyâ€™ll offer).
Unfortunately, sometimes I have to repeat this process if the further in-depth evaluation doesnâ€™t work out, but Iâ€™ve never had to do it a third time. Another upside to this methodology (other then me not doing the sales peoples jobs) is that if all of the vendors are able to show up on the same day they know there is a competition for the sale, which of course puts me in a better bargaining position cone the purchase.
BTW -- I gave up the ego boast of sole decision and purchasing authority years ago. (I also use team interviews when hiring as well).

Several of the IT analyst firms regularly publish comparative evaluations of portfolio management products. Obviously not the same as demoing the product yourself, but if you're in the early stages of evaluating solutions it can be a good starting point for understanding who the key vendors are as well as their relative strengths and differentiators.
Two prominent evaluations are the Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Project Portfolio Management, and Forrester's "Wave" report on the same topic. In addition to vendor ratings, each spells out their evaluation criteria, which may be help you begin to define your requirements and what to look for/expect.
Both would generally require a subscription to Gartner's or Forrester's respective services in order to access the reports, but I believe many of the portfolio management vendors have purchased reprints you can download from their websites, after completing a registration form.
The latest Forrester report neglected to cover my company (PowerSteering Software), so of course I would encourage you to <a href="http://www.powersteeringsoftware.com/PPM_Solutions "> visit our site </a> for more info as you evaluate software packages.

Agreed, however there are more than just the two firms mentioned, and not all firms require subscription, a number produce comparison reports that can be purchased as a one off item. The problem with going to the vendors site for a copy of any report begs the question of what is the relationship between the analyst firm and the vendor; did the vendor pay to be in the report. Look at where the analyst firm gets its revenue from before you believe what you read.

Roy,
Completely agree in turn. Though as the analyst firms also derive revenue from "end user" clients, one would hope they find some way to balance the interests of their 2 customer segments.
Any vendor offering free access to an analyst report presumably only does so because the report casts them in a favorable light. But still, it's a way to access such reports for free (or, more accurately, on the vendor's dime, since they've almost certainly paid the analyst firm for reprint rights) as opposed to shelling out for the research yourself on a one-off basis, which tends to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.
In addition to the bias issue, such reports invariably suffer from having to take a generic perspective of user requirements, and tend to focus on the needs of 1) large organizations and 2) IT groups looking to improve IT management exclusively (as opposed to using a portfolio management application to manage a corporate PMO, a non-IT business function, or some combination thereof).
Any organization evaluating solutions should of course not rely on any third party opinion other than as part of initial information gathering to get a sense of the vendor landscape. There can be no substitute for doing your own due diligence and directly evaluating how well an application addresses your organization's unique requirements.
Lastly: I would be interested in learning which other comparisons of portfolio management solutions are out there.